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January 17, 1967 National Theatre, Singapore City, SIN
The group's performance with the Walker Brothers was promoted by Donald Moore and Mike Ellery. The band (Keith Relf on vocals, rhythm guitar, harp, Jimmy Page on lead guitar, Chris Dreja on bass guitar and Jim McCarty on drums) left London for Singapore on January 15th 1967, arriving late the 16th. On the 17th they held a press conference at the offices of Donald Moore Concerts Ltd.'s office dressed as if they had just walked out of Carnaby Street. "London is so grey and drab, so we like to dress as brightly as possible," said Jimmy Page, who was sporting a shimmering pink, blue and grey tie the size of a napkin. They then went to the EMI studios, Macdonald House on Orchard Road, where EMI presented them with a couple of EPs and singles by their Singapore artistes such as the Quests and the Antartics and they visited the recording studio where they watched the Antartics recording their new single, with Jimmy Page giving some pointers to the Antartics lead guitar player, Joe Mann. Whilst here they were interviewed by Tan Swee Leong for her radio programme. They then did a rehearsal followed by a Chinese lunch. Apparently they were very impressed with the Peking Duck, but rather doubtful about the hot chillies! They then did two performances with the Walker Brothers at 6.45 and 9.30pm at the National Theatre. Throughout their two performances, which lasted about 90 minutes each, teenage girls, some wearing mini-skirts, screamed continuously, half drowning out their music. When they were not screaming, they were crying out "I love you, I love you." Scores tried to rush on to the stage. On each occasion they were held back by the strong arms of the Police Reserve Unit, the British military police, and the theatre ushers. Some broke down and wept as they were carried back to their seats and told to sit down. Most were daughters of British Servicemen. Before the start of the first performance at 6.45pm about 300 teenagers had braved the rain to wait for the arrival of their idols outside the theatre. The Reserve Unit squad had to interlock arms all the way from the entrance of the theatre to the door leading to the dressing room, to force back the wildly screaming fans. In addition six tough British military policemen stood outside the dressing room door to prevent the predominantly British teenage crowd from forcing their way in. Supporting the headliners were the Quotations, and local bands the Antartics and the Quests. The Quests bass player Henry's father passed away just before the show and they had to get a replacement. They remembered Peter Ghouse the singer and rhythm guitarist of Malaysia's Hunters. Hunters were one of the top guitar bands in Malaysia at that time, as they had an ace guitar player in their midst called Terry Thaddeus. The Hunters had played at some Quests shows before and had become quite friendly with the band. A call was made to Peter and he agreed to fly to Singapore to play the show. It was tricky for him being asked to play bass when his instrument was guitar, but to his credit Peter pulled it off. Wednesday 18th was a rest day for the bands before travelling on to Sydney, Australia on the 19th.